She fell forward, and fell, and fell. She crashed into what felt like mud, thick and slurping as she tried to scramble to her feet. The bell tower had disintegrated around her. Nothing surrounded her but black trees against a rusty night sky.

This is not yours.

A figure stepped out of the trees before her, darkness pouring off of him like sheets of rain. If he’d been human, it had been some time ago; his skin was marbled, veined with black. Rebeka stared up at him, hands fisting in the glop beneath her. When she reached out for the currents of energy, they quivered, caught between her and the figure.

You don’t belong here. The figure stepped closer. Rebeka rocked back, mud thickening around her. His words swelled all around her like blood vessels ready to burst. THIS IS NOT YOURS.

Rebeka closed her eyes. She’d been here before: the dark woods that smelled of smoke and blood. It hadn’t made sense then, how much it felt like home. It still didn’t now. But now she also felt—what? An opening? An escape?

No. She felt at peace.

The shadows swirled around her, slicing through the air, and the figure staggered back, throwing a hand over his head. Intruder, the whispers chattered. Intruder. Yet she felt certain that only one of them didn’t belong here. And it wasn’t her.

WHO ARE YOU? the man howled. HOW CAN YOU CONTROL THEM? He was pushing back against her attack, but there was something ragged in his words, something that spiked into her veins.

No one. She was no one at all.

The shadows snapped into her then with that same sense of oneness she’d felt in the bell tower. She pulled out of the mud effortlessly. The trees parted around her, their pulsing breaths relaxing as she passed. Rot and metallic tang hung heavy in the air, but she no longer feared them. She breathed in; breathed out. She would survive. She always survived.

And then: another figure, blocking her path.

It pressed against her thoughts as she looked up, around. She’d found herself in the center of ruins, once built from massive slabs of granite that jutted at strange angles. The figure was giant, but it wasn’t threatening her; it was only watching, peering around in her head, the same as the other shadows had done.

Well. She could hardly blame it. Friend or foe? Wasn’t she making the same calculation now?

It swept a meaty arm before it, and the air shimmered and warped.